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Pork Olives
576. Cut slices from a fillet or leg of cold pork, cover them with a common forcemeat, with sage leaves instead of sweet herbs. Roll and tie them; stew them slowly in cold pork gravy or lard. Drain well before serving on a bed of mashed turnips, or potatoes, or peasepudding.
A thrift dish built on cold roast pork, closer to a stuffed roulade than anything to do with olives. The original assumes you already know how to make forcemeat and how a stewpan behaves over a low fire.
- "Olives" means rolled meatAn olive is a thin slice of meat spread with stuffing, rolled and tied — the same construction as a beef olive or a modern involtini. No olives are involved at any stage.
- Start with cooked porkThe recipe is for leftovers: slices carved from a joint that has already been roasted and gone cold. Raw pork sliced thin will overcook long before the roll heats through, so this is not the dish for it.
- Cutting the slicesAim for slices about 1/4 inch thick and roughly 4 by 5 inches, cut across the grain. Flatten them lightly between sheets of plastic so they roll without splitting.
- Common forcemeatIn this period that means soft breadcrumbs, chopped suet or butter, grated lemon peel, salt, pepper and egg to bind — with chopped sage taking the place of the usual mixed herbs. Two teaspoons of chopped fresh sage to a cupful of crumbs is plenty; dried sage is stronger and needs half that.
- TyingButcher's twine or a cocktail stick at each end. Cold pork has no give and the rolls will unwind in the pan if they are only tucked.
- "Stew slowly"A bare simmer, liquid barely trembling, for 25 to 35 minutes — long enough to set the forcemeat and heat the pork through. The original assumes a stewpan over a low fire; a covered dish in a low oven, around 300F, will stand in for it. Hard boiling squeezes the meat dry and the rolls fall apart.
- Gravy or lardCold pork gravy is the jellied dripping and juices from the roast, melted. Lard is the alternative: the rolls are effectively confited in fat, which is why the instruction to drain well before serving matters — otherwise the fat runs into the mash.
- PeasepuddingSplit yellow peas boiled soft, drained, beaten with butter, salt and pepper, and traditionally cooked in a floured cloth. Any of the three suggested beds — turnip, potato or pea — is there to take up the pan fat.
- YieldReckon two or three rolls a person. A pound of cold pork cut this way gives about six rolls, so with a cupful of forcemeat it serves two or three as a main course.
Rolled and stuffed meat slices ran through British cookery for centuries under a confusing set of names — alows, aloes, olives, collops — and the word "olive" here is generally traced to the shape of the finished roll rather than to the fruit, with some writers connecting it instead to the French alouettes sans tête, "larks without heads", the same idea applied to veal. Beef olives were the familiar version; pork olives, as here, belong squarely to the economy side of the Victorian kitchen, where a cold leg or fillet left from Sunday had to reappear as something that looked deliberate. Books of this type gathered such recipes in bulk, numbering them for quick reference and assuming the cook already knew what a common forcemeat contained — hence the single line of instruction for what is really three separate operations.